Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2019 December 3

= December 3 =

Information on spending by shoppers
How does Adobe know that "Cyber Monday shoppers on track to hit a record $9.4 billion"? Wouldn't that require them knowing private information? How are they able to gather this information? Bus stop (talk) 03:21, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
 * It's likely aggregate data that has been de-identified, so they don't know what you personally spent, but they know collectively what you everyone else spent. RudolfRed (talk) 04:27, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
 * But still, from where are the getting the data? Do all commercial enterprises release information related to the amount of sales they made on a given day? Bus stop (talk) 04:58, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
 * According to Adobe, for their holiday shopping predictions, they collected info from 4,500 web sites starting November 1: and "Our report uses aggregated and anonymized data only, via Adobe Analytics and Adobe Experience Cloud, to develop insights about online retail and economic trends."  Presumably this is from companies that have purchased the Adobe Analytics product. RudolfRed (talk) 05:50, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I've heard some investigative reporting that was saying that the sales projections for Black Friday and similar events are often quoted in the news, but also often wrong - because they are projections, not actual sales figures. They seem to be generated mostly as good PR for the company doing the projections. These stats should be handled carefully if added to articles. -- Beland (talk) 17:56, 3 December 2019 (UTC)